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Saturday, February 20, 2010

Zhigulevskoe More 010 Marathon and Championship of Russia Feb 8th

Press release by Aleksey Razhev and Elena Kocheva

Our contests came to a close on the 6th of February. Sunday’s forecast was rather poor, so the organizers decided to carry out only marathon and freestyle, because there wasn’t enough wind for slalom. The second marathon race in “kite skis” and “kite snowboard” classes (for windsurfers it was the first one) lay along the same distance as the day before.
By the starting time the temperature was 15 degrees below zero, the wind was northerly of 2-4 mps. Passing the first checkpoint of the way was quite easy for all the competitors. Then on the tack section the Volga wind drifted lots of surprises. At the moment it faded, at another became stronger again on different sections, this “northerly fellow” tested pilots’ skills of changing fast the tactical race pattern. Isn’t it hard to ride among leaders and especially to lead them! The racing avant-garde first faced the wind holes, and those who followed got very useful pieces of information for changing tacks opportunely. Another useful skill for riders is the ability to move forward with total lack of wind using skating stride. Though some competitors were not skilled enough to struggle with calm, and the rescue group evacuated them only in early twilight. The marathon started at 12:23 and ended at 15:19.

Freestylers were about to carry out all “double” (Double elimination system). It was short of nearly 10 minutes for snowboarders to run the final heat because Nikolai Rakhmatov and Alexander Gryanik were taken up with their duel. There still remained a hope of the wind to become stronger on Sunday.
According to specialized weather forecast site windguru.cz, on Sunday we were waiting for south wind of 2 mps. Usually in the Championship venue forecasts are confirmed, and it really blows on 4-5 mps! That’s why the Racing Committee was buying time to the last in the hope of showy contests final. But the wing appeared at nearly 5 pm only when competitors were about to depart.
Award ceremony was held in bar-restaurant “Zhara” (“Heat”), an official partner of the Championship. Participants greeted everybody who walked up the stage for being awarded with medals, certificates, and worth prizes. By the way, the prize fund of contests in terms of hard cash was 400 000 rubles. Triumpher of the day was master Aleksey Pavlov from Yaroslavl – he walked up the stage for getting 1st placement medal four times! Aleksey won in kite-snowboard class in all kinds of programs and was the best of masters. The big event of award ceremony was the draw game b/n competitors in kite-skis class of a pair of superb freeride skis granted by Michael Kaspar. The treasured gift came to young competitor Aleksey Galiev from Nadym.
Right away the ceremony sportsmen hastily departed because of Monday’s work or study. Let’s point out that according to the results of the contests first five sportsmen in every nomination can submit documents for conferment as a Master of sport of Russia, and those who took placements from 6 to 9 – for conferment as Candidate in masters of sport.
As specified, in the Championship took part 142 sportsmen at the age of 15 to 54, 4 of them are from Ukraine, 1 from Belarus, 1 from Switzerland. In course race competed 119 riders, in marathon – 122, in freestyle – 22.
По результатам опросов участников многие уже запланировали себе на зимний сезон 2010-2011 поездку на «Жигулёвское Море-011», на Марафон, который ещё никто не выигрывал дважды. Что ж, пора начинать подготовку!
According to participants survey, many of them have already planned to take part in “Zhigulevskoe More-011” in winter season 2010-2011, take part in Marathon in which nobody had won twice. Well, it’s time to start training!

RESULTS OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF RUSSIA
IN WINTER WINDSURFING AND SNOWKITING

Extra prizes passed to: Artem Garashchenko (Yekaterinburg) for best trick, junior Artem Trofimenko (winter windsutfing – marathon, course race) from Monchegorsk, junior Maxim Vyatkin (kite skis, course race) from Togliatti. Souvenirs from «FLYSURFER» company got all who competed on kites of this brand, and all the prize winners, despite their times on stage, got the pack of official contest drink “Adrenaline Rush”. Also Medical Health Centre “Zdorovoe pokolenie” (“Healthy generation”) made special mention of competitors from Togliatti. The most effective - Eugeniya Rakusheva and Dmitry Dmitriev (4th place in kite snowboard in marathon and course race) received client’s gift certificates, and other 11 sportsmen from Togliatti got gift certificates for guest visit (bathhouse, swimming pool, training simulators etc with no time limits).